Oh, I definitely don't agree with his suggestion. Just don't think your suggested fix is the correct option either. I'm unsure what the best "fix" would be... but it would probably include multiple things and not be super easily to implement quickly. Anything we do would have to be for future seasons.
Despite according to queue at a given time getting officially declared as colluding or not, that's clearly a practice against what you would call fair competition. The same holds true for other possible abuses, like the one suggested by Stexe. It surely isn't an easy thing to deal with, that much I can easily see.
They added MP and ELO relatively late in the Beta process, but as I recall matching players on rank was important not for tournament purposes but to help prevent new players getting matched against much harder opponents with more established decks. So at the ELO charts have grown it would seem to be safer to allow a wider variance in matching opponents, at least at the higher ends.
Meanwhile 1200 players complain about getting matched up against 1600 players--which happens--because it is usually an unfun experience that isn't even that educational. Both that complaint and this would be solved if we simply had more people online playing games at the same time...
Indeed, more ppl playing would make everything go moor smoothly. (Although, it goes without saying, lack of players is not good enough an excuse for unfair practices) Regarding the specifics of how people gets matched against other players: I have no info about BM's RMM implementation. But, usually (and I mean this specifically in regards to competitive-gaming ELO-like MMs) pairings are not picked depending on the player's rating (the ones you see in the lobby screens), but rather on a second, hidden metric which is kept up to date by the system. This second metric is based to some extent on your current rating (i.e. the rating is part of the metric's formula), and more often than not it behaves like a moving average of sorts. I can't remember the exact nomenclature (this is used in systems like Microsoft's TrueSkill, the SC2 MM, etc.), but the metric basically is an estimate of what the system thinks your "real" ranking should be, depending on your latest few games. I.e. if your winning a lot, you'll be likely to be matched with opponents with a ranking higher than yours. Obviously the contrary applies if you've been losing a lot. This is basically a way for the system to give you a chance an increase ( or decrease) your rank much more quickly than you would if you kept being matched against opponents with your same rank. So, assuming CH's MM follows the same rules (which, in my experience, seems like being the case) this: Is far from being an unreasonable pairing. Maybe the 1.2k player has been performing very well, while the 1.6k one lost lots of matches so, in such an instance, that would more even of a match than one could initially think. Now, of course people look at other players' rankings and asses those people's skill depending on it, leading to all sorts of problems. This is also why, for instance, in systems like the one being used for SC2, the "real" ranking is never shown to the player.
Addendum: this is also why rankings are rarely used as a way to award the "best player" in most kinds of competitions. At best rankings (be it ELO-based, or otherwise) are rather used to pick seeds for tournaments, where the true winner is determined.
Yes, that was one of my first complaints with the season when it started. Would have been better to divide the prizes up instead of having it so granular between first and second. And maybe split the figures from the rankings and have it "if your average is 1800 you get all 3, if your average is 1700 you get 2 of 3, if your average is 1600 you get 1 of 3."
Yeah, yeah. Was just commenting on how Elo isn't the best measurement out there, especially when there are ways to exploit things by a few points here and there. Also, it technically is on topic in a sense. People wouldn't be selective queuing as much if Elo wasn't such a huge factor in determining prizes.
Ehhhhhhh. More games are being played by top players. Some of them are maybe doing something that some would consider an exploit. @Jon still hasn't weighed in on this. Is it an exploit? Is it bad? What does Blue Manchu think? If it's a problem, BM can do something about it—either on the code end, or on the policy end, or on the incentive end (by telling me to change my method).
I definitely think the season is overall doing more good than bad. Lots of more people are playing that wouldn't be otherwise, so that's a plus. =)
I think I said pretty much everything I had to contribute to the discussion. I also think the vast majority of those participating in the discussion is mature enough to judge for themselves what the inherent problems with the system are. I hope we don't need BM to have an official word on the matter in order for those abusing selective queuing to stop doing that. After all, it's each and every community member's responsibility to give her own contribution to making the game environment the best it possibly could, which also entails refraining from adopting a dubious behavior (in whatever context). This is especially true for long time members and players at the higher skill level. TL;DR; We shouldn't need Jon (or anybody else) to give us rules we could anyway agree upon on our own and without the team's intervention, especially when it's clear (at least it's clear to me when I read this thread) that pretty much everyone agrees what we've been talking about is an undesirable thing. That being said, the devs sharing their opinion with us would be appreciated nonetheless, although I do understand if they didn't want to have a say on such a delicate matter.
Except that gamers are going to game. Not everyone in the community values courtesy and fair play over winning—in fact, probably very few do. Just being realistic
Of course almost every opinion here was against selective queuing, I don't think players that practise this will come here and say: "Hey, I do it", because they would make themselves look bad. I wouldn't measure the issue only with the opinions that are found here, because these are few voices in comparison with the amount of players there are.
